Showing results by narrator "Teresa Gallagher" in All Categories

Sure, some parents are embarrassing - but they’re nothing on this lot. These 10 tales of the world’s most spectacularly silly mums and deliriously daft dads will leave you rocking with laughter. Pinch your nose for Peter Pong, the man with the stinkiest feet in the world...jump out of the way of Harriet Hurry, the fastest mum on two wheels...watch out for Monty Monopolize, the dad who takes all his kids' toys...and oh no, it’s Supermum! Brandishing a toilet brush, a mop and a very bad homemade outfit....

With the same deadpan mania and genius for dislocation that he brought to his internationally acclaimed novels A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami makes this collection of stories a determined assault on the normal. A man sees his favorite elephant vanish into thin air; a newlywed couple suffers attacks of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald's in the middle of the night; and a young woman discovers that she has become irresistible to a little green monster who burrows up through her backyard.

A complex plot of love and inheritance is set against the English legal system of the mid-19th century. As the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce drags on, it becomes an obsession to everyone involved. And the issue on an inheritance ultimately becomes a question of murder.

Ben is getting used to life without his beloved granny. She was a cabbage enthusiast, a Scrabble partner...and an international jewel thief known as the Black Cat. Now, only the memory of their extraordinary adventure to steal the Crown Jewels lives on. Then something inexplicable happens. World-famous treasures are stolen in the dead of night and the clues point to none other than...the Black Cat? Expect the unexpected in this adventure, which will have listeners on the edge of their seats as they join Ben on his quest to unravel the mystery of the return of the Black Cat.

Three separate women, living in different locations and eras, are linked by their passion for Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway. As they each live through a Tuesday in June, their thoughts and experiences mirror each other and become interwoven. In Richmond in 1923, Virginia Woolf struggles to write a novel whose protagonist is Mrs Dalloway. In Los Angeles in 1949, Laura ignores her chores and small son to sit in bed reading Mrs Dalloway. In 1990s New York, Clarissa goes to buy flowers for a party, mirroring the start of the fictional Mrs Dalloway’s day.

The six stories in Haruki Murakami’s mesmerizing collection are set at the time of the catastrophic 1995 Kobe earthquake, when Japan became brutally aware of the fragility of its daily existence. But the upheavals that afflict Murakami’s characters are even deeper and more mysterious, emanating from a place where the human meets the inhuman.

Early in Mary Tudor's turbulent reign, Lady Catherine and Lady Mary Grey are reeling after the brutal execution of their elder seventeen-year-old sister, Lady Jane Grey, and the succession is by no means stable. In Sisters of Treason, Elizabeth Freemantle brings these young women to life in a spellbinding Tudor tale of love and politics.

Tchaikovsky is one of the most popular composers of all time. His melodies are known to many people who may never have heard his name. They crop up on mobile telephones, alarm clocks and answering machines as often as on records and concert programs. Like his music, the man himself was widely loved, but his inner life was fraught with sufferings, confusions and a deep vein of self-doubt. The drama of his emotional life is vividly reflected in his music, letters and diaries, all of which play a major part in this intimate portrait-in-sound.

The eldest of the notorious Mitford sisters, Nancy Mitford was renowned for her comic novels of upper-class life. An aristocrat and socialite, she mingled with the 'Bright Young Things' in interwar London, and went on to satirise their foibles in razor-sharp, wickedly funny prose. Collected here are adaptations of her two best sellers, the semi-autobiographical The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, her delightful biography of Louis XV's chief mistress, and a pair of fascinating programmes exploring her own unconventional life.

One of the greatest novelists of all time, Leo Tolstoy is famed worldwide for his masterpieces of realist fiction, War and Peace and Anna Karenina. This comprehensive collection contains both those iconic works, as well as his final novel, Resurrection, his autobiographical essay 'A Confession', Stephen Wakelam's dramatic account of his tempestuous marriage, Mrs Tolstoy, and In Our Time: Tolstoy.

Anna Karenina enjoys a privileged and aristrocratic lifestyle as the wife of influential government official Alexy Karenin. Yet their ten-year marriage is devoid of tenderness, and when Anna falls in love with the handsome Count Vronsky they embark upon a deep and passionate affair. Reflecting the social conditions of the era in which it was written, Tolstoy's masterpiece sets a doomed love story against a harsh and unforgiving backdrop.

The Wouldbegoods, a sequel to The Treasure Seekers, reacquaints us with the six Bastable children: Dora, Oswald, Dicky, Alice, Noël, and H.O. Again, the story is told by you-may-not-know-who, and the children find all sorts of ways in which to amuse themselves in the country during the summer holidays.

A milestone in the history of the novel, Samuel Richardson's epistolary and elaborate Clarissa follows the life of a chaste young woman desperate to protect her virtue. The recording is divided into three volumes.

A series of BBC Radio short stories, comprised of classic and period dramas featuring four female sleuths to rival Sherlock Holmes himself. 'The Redhill Sisterhood' by Catherine Louisa Pirkis, 'Mr Bovey’s Unexpected Will' by L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace, 'The Golden Slipper' by Anna Katharine Green and 'The Law and the Lady' by Wilkie Collins. Starring Gayanne Potter as Loveday Brooke, Elizabeth Conboy as Florence Cusack, Teresa Gallagher as Violet Strange and Abigail Docherty as Valeria Woodville.

Here are 16 tales from one of the great works of the Middle Ages. Ten young people have fled for a while the terrible effects of the Black Death in Florence and, in an idyllic setting, tell a series of brilliant stories, by turns humorous, bawdy, tragic and provocative. This celebration of physical and sexual vitality is Boccaccio’s answer to the sublime other-worldliness of Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Five stories from influential women writers of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century. New Zealand-born Katherine Mansfield settled in England where she wrote a series of short stories that are widely recognized as among the finest of the 20th century for their economy, clarity, sensitivity and effect. "The Garden Party" is one of her most famous, while "Daughters of the Late Colonel" shows a wonderful sense of wit.

A collection of fabulous tales of genies, heroes, flying carpets and fantastic voyages, The Arabian Nights has enchanted generations of children and adults. Forged in the Islamic Golden Age, it was brought to Europe in the 18th Century, where it became an instant sensation. Included here are seven full-cast dramatisations, starring Carolyn Backhouse as Shahrazad and Derek Jacobi as the King, as well as a bonus edition of In Our Time exploring the story behind the tales.

Six children decide that the only way to restore the fortunes of their family is to go out and do it themselves. They produce a series of madcap schemes and one after another try them out with varying degrees of success, most resulting in trouble rather than riches. But then one scheme begins to look more promising than the rest.

Few winter stories are more affecting than Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl. Written in 1848, and strictly speaking a New Year's Eve story, it showed so clearly then, as it does now, that the Christmas holidays do not represent fireside, food, and presents for all. This story never fails to move, yet it somehow avoids serious sentimentality.

Since its first publication in 1885, Little Lord Fauntleroy has become a favorite with children. The move from New York to his ancestral castle comes as a shock to both Cedric and his new-found relatives, and while he comes to terms with aristocratic ways, they become more aware of compassion and social justice.